Doctor Who_ The Awakening - Eric Pringle [40]
He reached the last cottages surrounding the Green, and looked nervously up and down an open section of road to make sure it was clear. Then he scampered across it like a bolting rabbit and hid on the other side, among the prickly foliage of an overgrown climbing rose which festooned a wooden fence.
After a few moments he had recovered his composure enough to reach up and peer between the pale relics of dead rose blooms towards the Green. The thorny branches criss-crossed his vision like barbed wire. When he saw the Green, his heart nearly stopped.
He caught his breath and bit his lip. Tears rushed to his eyes and his spirits sank to the bottom of his buckled shoes. He could hardly believe his eyes, for what he saw there on the Green he had seen before: everything was exactly as it had been when he passed the Village Green on his way to Little Hodcombe church before the terrible battle in 1643.
Everything was happening again – all over again, every detail. There was the tall maypole with its white ribbons whirling gently in the breeze, just as they had then. Near it were the foot-soldiers building up a bonfire for the festivities’ fearful climax. And there were the troopers, and the bravely fluttering banner, and the horses and the gaudy uniforms – all the colour and activity which had brightened that day too, before it was crushed, and transformed to screams and blood and ashes.
Will sobbed. On that bright afternoon Squire Hutchinson had cantered about the Green on his big chestnut horse, masterminding the preparation – and here was the new Squire, Sir George – another Hutchinson -dressed in identical Cavalier clothes, riding up to the spot where his Sergeant was telling the soldiers to build the pyre ever higher. ‘It’s perfect!’ Sir George cried triumphantly. Will could hear him clearly, in his hiding place among the roses.
Sir George turned to gaze out across the Green to the houses and streets of the village. He seemed to be looking directly at Will, whose heart thumped madly as he dived down out of sight.
In the narrow, bare hut on the outskirts of the village, Andrew Verney stopped hurling himself at the door and sank exhausted onto a bale of straw. He held his aching shoulder and looked groggily across at Turlough, who gave the door one more battering and then, gasping for breath himself, dropped down beside the old man.
‘The door must give way soon,’ he groaned.
‘Agreed,’ Verney, said. ‘But at the moment all we’re doing is wearing out our shoulders.’
Frustrated almost beyond endurance by that stubborn piece of timber, Turlough staggered back on to his feet.
‘There’s no other way!’ he cried, making ready to charge the door again.
As Turlough attempted to break down the door, a farm cart, decorated with flowers and boughs of greenery and pulled by a glistening white horse, was rolling away from Ben Wolsey’s farmhouse. Watching farmhands cheered, and women in seventeenth-century clothes threw rose petals over their Queen of the May.
The cart was her royal carriage. Tegan rode high upon it, looking, in that spring-coloured dress, every inch like a queen setting out to greet her subjects. Jane Hampden was on the cart too, as the Queen’s companion. The ‘carriage’
was driven by Ben Wolsey, sitting forward on the box with the reins held loosely in his hands.
Now, as the cart left the farmyard, he flicked the reins and the horse kicked and pulled faster. Villagers lined the route; they waved and threw rose petals. The Queen and her companion exchanged nervous glances and gritted their teeth, steadying themselves for the trials to come.
A fierce heat overlay the village and wrapped itself about the surrounding countryside. The activity which throbbed and stirred inside it made waves which rippled through